Canadians are already familiar with private health care. Anyone with a pet who needed medical attention knows the gut wrenching pain of going to a vet, expecting a standard level of care and pricing, only to learn from friends and family that they’ve been fleeced at 2 to 5 times the price. But you needed help at the time and it was meant to happen is what we tell ourselves.

It’s the invisible hand right?

You know…the one you see making jazz hands providing below average care and attention to your pet, and the other that basically steals your wallet and uses you like a piggy bank?

I write from experience, but I’m not the only one. So now you just want to switch pets to humans?

Call the election, UCP. Alberta will see you out.

I don’t believe Fir is described as issuing a sincere apology with no ducking. Rather, she’s described as initially denying the incident. She was confronted with the recording, and at that point she issues what could be an apology.

As Jim Groom and Rob Breakenridge point out, this plays into the larger scene which the UCP is taking a lot of heat for its latest choices, and there’s a strong suspicion that the UCP simply treat any opposition to its policies with contempt.

Relevant part of the video is 1 minute in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XCfMnX43M8

Some folks - myself included - don’t even believe that “AI” as currently described matches even the hype.

Canadians should be ready to go full into cash. We’ll wait for the explosion and buy up the fancy server racks, chips, hard drives, and other hardware at pennies on the dollar to set up our own data centres that will actually do real tasks besides AI slop.

Dr. Ken Cheung struggles for a few seconds to describe how he views himself within Alberta’s rapidly privatizing health-care system.

“I feel like I’m a conscientious objector,” said Cheung, an anesthesiologist for 25 years at Calgary’s Foothills Medical Centre.

As a supporter of public health care, Cheung said he objects to a policy that requires him to work in one of Alberta’s private, for-profit chartered surgical facilities, or CSFs.

Those CSFs are now churning out tens of thousands of surgeries, mostly in Calgary and Edmonton, every year under a United Conservative Party government.

For years, the UCP have played word salad about how they’re going to open X beds, and facilities will be built in some regional point. For years, everyone has asked the obvious question of how these places are going to be staffed. Well, now we know the answer, don’t we? They’re forcing public healthcare staff into the private sector…at higher costs to society.

This is basically Loblaws showing up raising the price of bread and telling people to suck it - then providing their pennies on the dollar gift card and calling it a day. Alberta is getting thugged and shaken down by the UCP when they’re sick and most vulnerable.

I’d like to piggyback off these remarks to add that Canada did have a secure digital communication system in Blackberry. I point out that system was criticized for being closed and “slow” to adapt to the changes brought by Apple.

But I’d simply take the view that Canada gave up on Blackberry. Blackberry’s entire reputation was based on secure communications catered towards corporate and enterprise environments - whether we liked it or not. Canada just gave way to less secure, more convenient American competitors. In so doing, we gave up a real option to American digital communications. Oh and by the way, the Americans still don’t have an answer to having all their telecommunication back doors getting hacked open.

Why do we have to listen to what this guy says his words meant back then? Is he an esteemed author? Do we have to analyze his intent? WHERE IS JA??

And you know people are getting nervous when the brother has to crawl out and “set the record straight”.

Late hours, on long stretches of road and away from intersections, walk down the centre of a street.

You have better line of sight, fewer blind corners, and you should be picked up by cameras. As long as you’re not intoxicated, you can also tell when someone or something approaches better.

Also a good pocket light with focus options. You can light the way with it, or blind anything temporarily. If built well, it can reinforce your fist, and you can hammer strike.

I don’t agree with the tariffs. Canada does have an auto industry, but as far as Electric Vehicles or batteries are concerned, there’s not much to protect. We don’t have a proper competitive product for EVs, and Canada doesn’t have the infrastructure investments needed to make EVs competitive with ICE vehicles. We’re a smaller market with a huge hinterland and hard winters, and that poses some natural challenges for EVs.

Also, we’re saddled with the Americans, and even they don’t appear to be pursuing EVs or battery technologies at the highest levels with maximum effort. What are these tariffs for, exactly?

Even if Chinese companies were allowed to sell to the Canadian markets, they’d likely be shipped in as final products, and we’d hope they’re not watered down.

Canada’s relationship with the US is not good at the moment, and the Americans are emphasizing onshoring and US manufacturing. Canada will have to balance what it wants with these real considerations. We may have the right value proposition for local manufacture, but that depends on how far out we look into the horizon.

So with all of this in mind, the Vauxhall Advance wants to ask Canola farmers to willingly offer their business as sacrifice to some tariffs that don’t even look like they’re accomplishing much? If anything, China’s negotiations amount to a gesture of please reconsider while we offset your product with other agricultural products from the Belt and Road initiative.

I think that’s a difficult message for the canola farmers to swallow. Everyone sees what happened to the American soy farmers. They’re done. Even after negotiations between the US and China led to a truce, the resulting supply glut and the rise of new competitors in South America will leave a lasting impression.

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-soybean-glut-could-defeat-us-export-hopes-after-trade-thaw-2025-11-12/

Some places do put fees on the sale of the car itself, and their regular registration, that go to public transit. Plus they deliberately reduce the supply of parking spaces available, effectively forcing car drivers to pay for the space they occupy. I think this puts a proper price for people to appreciate the hidden costs of car ownership.

But such policies are harder to “sell” to places with vast country or hinterlands because space is in abundance, and cars are heavily favoured.

These are indeed good examples.

Perhaps over the last 50 years, there are parts of Asia that build whole neighbourhoods with public transit in mind, and mixed-use zoning. They don’t have nearly the same learning curve to conquer as Alberta does…and they almost certainly don’t take +10 years to figure out how a line is supposed to interact with traffic lights.

I suppose “transit oriented development” are critical baby steps…but to some these are really small baby steps.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/edmonton/article/highly-anticipated-metro-lrt-line-opens-to-public/

He noted that when he started, Indigenous people made up 15 per cent of federal prison system inmates and this has since risen to 33 per cent and a shocking 50 per cent when it comes to women in the system.

Criminal Justice System to Canadian Society, Canadian Society do you copy? There’s a real problem here and we’re not the solution, over. /s

“The classification system has been identified by the Canadian Human Rights Commission as racist, as discriminatory on the basis of race, sex and disability,” Pate told APTN News.

“People with mental health issues, racialized people and women. And so disproportionately Indigenous women and men, but particularly women, are more likely to be classified as higher security.”

Allegations of racism aside, I think it’s a very sad situation when groups are openly inviting controversy, and cry foul when an expected unfavourable response happens.

I don’t think this bodes well even for people who are honestly trying to keep up with current events, and who also wade through all the noise. I can’t imagine what people who don’t even read much would make of this. I suppose that’s the point isn’t it? All this noise isn’t for the people who read, it’s for the people who just want to feel.

Isn’t that what happened to the Asians? When people needed something to blame, the Asians were the targets of random attacks. Women and seniors were the ones who ended up hospitalized. It was wrong then, it’s still wrong now for the pro-Israel groups to invite and promote this emotion of victimization within their communities.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9168424/

I still say this is part of the larger American scam for AI. AI’s just a tool, and certainly not autonomous as the stuff of movies. US companies are just using the concept of AI to layoff workers, and they’re trying to lock in their AI services contracts before the bubble bursts.

This article falls into the scam pile for me.

Plus I’m fairly certain Zuckerberg should be charged for Crimes Against Humanity, but that seems to be an issue for another day.

We shouldn’t be surprised that these hate groups continue to roam around. I am alarmed by how these groups are creeping up on communities via gyms and local martial arts schools. These places are supposed to pass on values of health, self-defence, dignity, and mutual respect. But, somehow these hate groups have put out a new concept and market themselves into these spaces. It’s a horror movie, and they’re perverting these values in the deepest sense.

Worse, they know what they are doing, and they hide and prey on people. Some of the gyms, when advised, didn’t know about these hate activities.

AntiHate has their own article on the subject, and the bottom links have a number of photos of other attendees.

Look this over, see if you can identify anyone and share the information. These people need help, and they need to be kept far away from any school or gym.

https://www.antihate.ca/everybody_attending_white_nationalist_conference_caught_on_film

https://www.antihate.ca/white_nationalist_organizing_exiles_golden_age_identify

Thank you for that How-To. Now I know this isn’t what you first intended, but I tried to adapt this for DigitalOcean [DO] which is where my VPS is. I was not able to set up the CNAME, and I kind of worked out what was happening without a solution. For now I don’t have the CNAME set up and the links lead directly to my S3 Bucket.

I’ve got my set up laid out at the bottom of the post here. I’ll ask there if it’s okay to just keep this arrangement or if there are concerns.

S3_BUCKET = 'your-super-unique-bucket-name'
S3_ENDPOINT = 'https://your-super-unique-bucket-name.tor1.digitaloceanspaces.com/'
S3_REGION = ''
S3_PUBLIC_URL = 'https://your-super-unique-bucket-name.tor1.digitaloceanspaces.com/folder-name'
S3_ACCESS_KEY = 'example004819c3ba9b31b0000000003'
S3_ACCESS_SECRET = 'exampleK004Uei/7Vf90FzWuN3zoGl5npK3zZc'

Greg MacPherson, Winnipeg’s acting manager of community development and author of the report, said the intention is not to criminalize people but to manage public spaces more consistently.

Too late, but Manitoba isn’t alone. Canada’s criminalizing people across the country, dumping them through the Justice System like hiding things under a neglected rug, and then running news cycles about how it’s reforming the books to be “tough on crime.” Oldest and most cynical sleight of hand folks.

You know what might be painful and scary, but totally a solution to the problem? We have to stop the endless urban sprawl. We don’t want to because land is supposed to be so affordable, and cars are what we damn near exclusively rely on. But this isn’t sustainable, and endlessly sprawling out is not logical. We’re spending more money building out so far that the maintenance costs are overwhelming.

The politicians could explore some mixed-used zoning to encourage development where people don’t have to walk +10 km to the grocery store and other services, and spend +2 hours doing daily commutes. Heck we might have to just declare rings around the cities as park land to just control the situation and bring sense back into development.

Look at Canada’s downtowns. There’s a spectrum, I’m sure. But I think they are generally devoid of any potential to raise life, and are very clearly built with the obvious intent to cheap out on people and take from communities. They’re desolate commuter zones.

There’s a lot of potential to start projects with real, generational impact.

No interest, and no courage to do so. You know what’s easy? Walking up to homeless encampments and bothering people. They don’t have walls, and they can’t stop you.

Mission accomplished!

I’m oversimplifying sure. But the homeless and the vulnerable are not the friction point here. It’s the corporate land owners interests, and their refusal to be dynamic and invite change. And yes, they can hide on the 12th floor behind commercial grade doors, an assistant who screens their calls, and corporate security. They don’t have to be bothered by politicians because that’s what their lobby is for.

Thank you again, for all the work.

Old posts can be automatically archived (saved to S3) to free up database space

When I first set up the .env.docker, I saw a mention of this feature. Is there a sample for me to look at to set up S3? When I started on 1.2.5, I don’t believe I saw any settings.

I suppose my instance is quite small, but this could be interesting to check out anyway.

Actively look to “give glory” or kudos to people around you.

On a practical level, be it an opposing force opponent, or even someone on your own squad - like a family member - looking to give glory encourages me to engage with my environment on a real level when I’m drifting off or getting lost. I’m trying to connect with the intentions of others while still trying to achieve my own. These don’t have to be lose-lose situations, and they shouldn’t be either.

If I can compliment someone on a tactic or a response committed under stress, I’m trying to say I see the other person. I’m also saying honestly that the action was valid, and others can understand my position without guessing. In a world where some feel they have to live by deception or seek glory for themselves exclusively, simply validating someone else gives strength and encourages others to tough out their positions in the face of toxicity.

You’re also forcing a change of perspective, and refraining from dwelling on the faults of others or yourself.

Even if the kudos goes to the opposition, I’d rather compliment someone I believe I can work with, and build mutual respect.

I think ActivityPub, a driver of the Fediverse, already serves as the mainstream protocol to enable these “platforms” to deliver content in the different ways that people have come to enjoy: such as Friendica, Mastodon, and so on.

Regardless of the front facing platform, I think what I want to see is deeper integration. Users from Mastodon or Friendica be more able to see posts and comments here on PieFed or Lemmy, and vice versa, as if we’re a single universe delivered in different ways. I even want to see users of PieFed be able to one day transfer their data and posts seamlessly over to say Lemmy, or Friendica.

I want to see an ActivityPub where we can resist censorship by standing alone on single instances, but in the event of an attack, we can move to new ones or bigger ones for strength in numbers. If we want the right to disappear, great, no one should get in the way. But if we want to be seen or heard in the face of violence and oppression, there should be more options in place for instances to operate in blocs, and to allow servers to cache and preserve content under attack.

In recent days, Youtube was seen taking down hundreds of videos of content documenting what many legal experts conclude is genocide carried out by Israel. Regardless of where one stands on that, the idea that a single entity can erase the collective documented experience of humanity is too much power.

I want to see an ActivityPub that can let people share their cat photos, and enjoy their moments; and I also want it to allow people to resist in credible ways if they choose to document their lives. I also want a Fediverse, that can allow even the lowly single instance server to serve with a bloc to shield even a single user’s content that might be forced down by violence.

I would swap for that Fediverse.

For what it’s worth, the Mayor doesn’t have to defend anything. She’s only being criticized for sharing what experts say.

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, already concluded genocide:

Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces committed four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, namely killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-committed-genocide-gaza-strip-un-commission-finds